A Madman and His Box
by halyathedragon
Summary: When you find an open box on your doorstep with you name written in blood on the side, don't open it. Dib unfortunately didn't follow that rule and now he must suffer the consequences.
1. Don't Lose Your Head

Dib hauled the drab-looking box up the stairs.

_Thump, thump, thu-thump._

The package made its way up the stairs slowly, for it was quite large and hefty. Finally the box traversed the last step with a deep _Thump! _and Dib stopped to catch his breath.

"I wonder what's in here…" The human murmured, running his finger under the open flap, the stench of metal and perhaps plastic violated his nose. He quickly shut the box, made a twisted face and gagged. "That's awful!" Dib mumbled.

He began to drag the box by the small handhold in the front, over the wood flooring and into his room, the only place where he got any privacy even though no one else was home. He pulled the package in front of his bed and plopped down on the floor beside it.

It was too dark to see much about the box, though Dib was used to it since he kept his room like that all the time. The raven-haired boy glanced over to his alarm clock.

_5:37 P.M. _were the red segmented numbers glowing on the display. Dib sighed. Only an hour or so had passed? But they had spent almost two day there, why has it only been an hour? He sighed again. Maybe he'd ask Parasa next time he got the chance.

Dib stood up and flicked on the light, his alien spaceship lamp illuminating the dark. He could have just opened the windows but he was too lazy and he felt whatever is in the box might be far too important to let the rest of the world see.

It could be from the Swollen Eyeball, though it lacked the small logo on the right corner that those packages usually had. No, this was something someone with little time put together. The topped wasn't tapped, it was beaten and worn, and this person didn't even have enough time to get a pen so they used their own blood to scribble Dibs name on the side of the box. Or at least, he thought it was their own blood.

The human sat up on his bed, sitting like a vulture over the box, arguing with himself about whether or not to open the box.

He decided to go with opening the box. Dib hopped off the bed and stood over the box that reached up to his knees. He cautiously pulled up the loss flaps, one in each hand.

His mouth was ajar. There were eight of them, stacked neatly in two layers and two by two layouts. Jet-black and crinkled beyond belief, egg-shaped trash bags with unknown contents. And the reek was almost unbearable, plastic and metallic tang and the smell of chemicals.

Dib gagged and felt his lunch come up to the back of his throat before settling back in his stomach. He wanted more than anything to turn on the fan and blow away that awful smell but that may only spread the stink all over the house.

The smell seemed to dissipate, leaving the air breathable again. The human almost couldn't suppress his excitement at the thought of what was in the box though the smell had suppressed most of the excitement.

Dib leaned over the package, placing his hand on the knot on top of the first bag. He carefully lifted it out of the box. It was heavy, at least nine pounds. Maybe it was a bowling ball, but most bowling balls aren't elliptical. He delicately placed the bag on his bed and placed his other hand on the knot, ready to untie the trash bag and see the mysterious object.

He yanked on the tie. It came loose and shed away to reveal…

Another bag. Dib frowned and poked the bag. The tie was much more complex than the last, at least three knots.

He untied the bag quickly to find another bag. The boy growled, his suspense and irritation rising. He had enough and ripped the bag on the side leaving it with a huge gash. He stuck his hand inside, knowing it was another bag. It was cold, smooth and slimy. And was that hair?

Dib quick as a flash yanked his hand out of the bag. His palm was covered in a thin clear liquid; it was like a layer of gooey plastic and was stained a rosy pink. He peered into the bag. It peered back.

The human was on the ceiling in a second, screeching like a boiling teapot.

"What the hell it that!?" Dib shrieked with his back against his door. He heart was pounding on his ribs, trying desperately to escape his body.

He crept forward, holding his breath and expecting that at any moment that _thing_ would jump out and eat off his face, it's not like it hasn't happened before. The human did the poke-it-then-run-back thing, hiding behind his door and peeking around the corner to see if anything happened. The bag just rustled as the A.C. turned on. Dib step foot back into the room and warily went up to the bag. He pulled off the shroud and saw the thing he hadn't expected.

It had golden hair, thick with the substance that was on Dibs hand and it curled in the back, tuffs of hair sticking up in all directions. It icy, pale green-blue eyes stared at Dib with such intense, blazing anger and hatred that it made him flinch. The face was twisted up into a snarl, revealing crooked yellowing teeth.

Dib only stared, his mouth agape trying to say something, but no sound came. He reached over his head and grabbed his hair, pulling it down and nearly wrenching it off his scalp.

"What… how…?" The human fumbled for his words. Maybe this was a movie prop, nothing more, not a real head. But the smell, why would a prop need to smell like _that_? Unless they needed the cast to throw up on the set, there was no good reason. It was real.

"What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do!?" Dib paced around the room like an animal trapped in a cage. "Ok, maybe I can call the police?" He thought about that idea. No, with his luck, they'd call his a psychopath and lock him up in a straitjacket for the rest of his life. Or worse, there are eight of these heads. They'd probably put him in the electric chair. Dib shuddered at the thought.

He could bury the heads in the backyard and then in sixty years someone would come about and randomly start digging in the yard to find eight skulls in the dirt. But what happens if the person that left the heads here comes back for them? If only life gave him straight answers, though nothing is ever straight in his messed up life.

Then he'd just keep the heads, in his closet, for the rest of his life. And that's not creepy at all.

But Dib had to at least tell his sister, Gaz. If he didn't, she'd find out sooner or later and kick his ass for not telling her. He'd just wait for her to get home.

* * *

Starting my second story!

This is a continuation of my first story. You don't need to read the first one but it will help you understand somethings like who Parasa is.

Hope everyone enjoys! Please review!


	2. Murder In Mind

The human went to the upstairs bathroom to take a shower, not before grabbing a clean towel. Hopefully a nice warm shower would help him sort his thoughts.

He stood in the shower, letting the water roll down his back. He tried to think but his mind only stayed blank. He finished his shower and clambered out, drying his black hair with the towel. Dib stopped in front of the mirror, thick with condensation from the warm air. He wiped away the fog; watching his hair as it bobbed back into place and admiring the notch at the end making his scythe-like hair look more like a lightning bolt. He cleaned his glasses and placed them atop his nose.

His slipped out into the rest of the cold house, frivolously rubbing his bath sheet on his hair. He heard the soft sound of feet climbing up the stairs. He looked down the staircase that he was standing in front of, frozen in place from surprise. His hands were still on his head with his towel.

His sister was trudging up the stairs. Dib blushed a deep crimson, embarrassed that he was standing there in front of Gaz. Without any clothes. He quickly brought his towel down to his waist and wound it around himself.

Lucky for Gaz, she had her nose in a book the entire time and had only stopped walking to finish the paragraph she was reading. The girl looked up to see her brother just tucking in the towel around his waist.

"Gaz, I need to tell you something." Dib spilled out.

Gaz only growled in response. His voice was still irritating. Even though it had gotten deeper, it still kept this certain tone to it that chewed at her nerves and filled her with rage. She closed her book and tried to get passed her brother.

"Seriously Gaz, I need you to listen." Dib begged, blocking her way.

Damn his tallness, Gaz thought, unable to get passed him. She glared at him.

"Ok, so there was this box and I brought it in side and then I opened it and…" Dib faltered, his voice not letting him reveal what was in the box to his sister. "It had… some things… just come in my room and let me show you." The boy scuttled away to his room, looking back at his sister with big eyes.

Gaz groaned and moved slowly over to his door. She leaned on the door frame. Dib was standing in front of his bed, blocking something behind his back with a skittish look on his face.

"Just promise me you won't freak out, ok?" He stepped out of the way.

Gaz could only stare. There was a head, on his bed.

"You'd better explain to me _why _you have someone's head or I'm calling the cops." Gaz hissed threateningly.

"Don't! I told you I found on the doorstep! I wouldn't kill someone!" Dib yelled, grabbing his sister by her shoulders and shaking her violently.

"Don't touch me!" Gaz snarled back, slapping her brother's hands off her and using her foot to push him away.

Dib stumble back and fell on his rear. "Sorry." He muttered.

"Look, I won't call the cops, but just leave me out of your weirdness." Gaz stomped out of his room and across the hall to hers. She looked back and slammed the door.

Dib sighed. He had hoped his sister would help him or something, not practically say 'Good Luck' and walk away. He just wanted the day to be over so he could sleep and wake up to his life being his definition of normal. School tomorrow, the thought popped into his mind. Crap, he had a project due tomorrow. He had been putting it off for days, though most of it was Zims fault. The project was to… to… Bah! He forgot what he even had to do for the project. Something about a dead guy named Euclid of Alexandria and how his fifth postulate was the bridge to the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry.

But before he started a project, he should put some clothes on. Dib slipped into his usual clothes: black pants, blue shirt and his trench coat.

Dib pulled out his also black and blue laptop and stared at the screen as it whirred to life. He clicked around the screen, opening the notepad. He began to type after reading a bit about the dead guy on the internet.

Euclid was born in 325 BC and he died in 265 BC. He is titled the father of geometry and little is known about Euclid's life, except that he was a teacher at Alexandria in Egypt. His most well-known work is called _The Elements_, one of the most successful books ever written.

And that's as far as he got before succumbing to boredom. Maybe he would see what Zim was doing in his base. He opened his spy camera program. Amazingly he's had that camera in Zims base for about two months and Zim still hasn't noticed.

The alien was sitting in a strange looking chair with his feet up on the panel that held all sorts of buttons. He didn't have his disguise on appeared to be chewing something which he promptly spat out into his palm. He pulled the small misshapen object apart. It stretched into a thin strand and Zim crumped it back into a ball before throwing it across the room. The wad of gum hit the wall and stuck there.

"Now I have to clean your disgusting ball of chewy paste off the wall. Thanks." Parasa said in a nagging tone.

Zim just waved his hand, brushing away the voice as if it were an irritating fly. "What did you do with the body computer?"

"I'm not called computer. And I disposed of it properly."

"Excellent… Now I will not have to deal with the stupid Dib-thing anymore." Zim cackled manically and sat there with a grin on his face.

"Well, actual you might see him tomorrow…" Parasa said slowly, trying to go easy on the cantankerous little alien.

"Eh?" Zim stared confusedly at the computer screen.

"I kind of let him go… yeah, so… How was your day?"

Zim growled, "Why would let him go?"

"You know… he's nice. Plus he already died once today."

Zim jumped out of the chair and stomped across the room to the elevator. "I'm going to find that _human_."

Parasa just sighed. "I know you're watching, Dib." She said after Zim was gone. "You'd better hide; Zim has murder on his mind."


	3. Chop, chop, chop

Dib swallowed. How did she know he was watching? And now Zim was coming for him. He should hide, in his sisters room would be the best for the reason that she hasn't gotten even with Zim since that terrible day about a year ago. So she probably beat Zim pretty bad.

Dib hopped off his floor and rushed over to his sister's door.

He knocked quietly and asked "Gaz, can I come in?"

"No." She responded.

"Please? Zim's coming here to kill me again."

"I thought I told you to leave me out of your weirdness."

Dib place his forehead on the door. Well he was out of ideas. Whatever, he'd hide in his closet and maybe Zim wouldn't find him. He walked back to his room and turned off his lamp.

The head seemed to watch him balefully. It was grinning, happy that Dib would die as it had.

Dib open his closet and threw himself inside. His head crashed into a pile of alien junk, from hats to books to grow-your-own-alien kits, which were just pieces of sponge. You couldn't even see the floor anymore.

If there was less crap in there, then maybe he could have actually spun himself upright but room there was not, for at the moment his legs were in the air and his head imprisoned in a box of tissues. How ironic.

Finally he heaved the box off his head, which was hard because the gargantuan size of his head. He gasped and sneezed violently, bits of tissue flying out of his nose. His body slipped down so his back was on the floor and his legs could rest on the mound of stuff in his closet. He reached up, closed the closet door, and waited.

The window flipped open with a drawn-out, eerie groan.

Fuck, Dib mouthed. He forgot to lock the windows.

Two glistening red eyes flickered into view, accompanied by a malicious grin, the setting sun glinting off the zipper-like teeth. Two different sized antennas sat on top of its head, outlined against the background.

"Zim has come to put you to bed, with an ax to chop off your head. Chop, chop, chop, chop." Zim sang creepily, the tone so inviting but the lyrics so sinister. He swung through the window and landing nearly silent. He rocked the ax in his hand back and forth and he ran his finger along the blade, casting his eyes to Dib's closet.

Dib sat quietly, his body trembling slightly.

Zim placed heavy footsteps, humming the tune to his screwed up song. His ax was razor sharp and it rested in the palm of his hand. He trudged over to the closet, his antennas flicking forward. He seemed to tower over the closet.

"This is Zims bitter-sweet revenge." Zim snarled, lifting the ax over his head, preparing to bring it down onto the closet door and make Dib suffer his wrath.

Dib held his breath and squeezed his eyes tight, trying hard not to let out a sob of defeat. He heard the sound of rippling plastic.

The alien was standing over the box with a bag in one hand and the ax in the other. He looked over to the bed for the first time and smirked.

"Dib-stink, Zim didn't think you had the guts to kill a fellow human-being, but all humans kill one another eventually."

Dib was about to object but he caught himself before he could say anything.

"Do you not want to talk to Zim?" He cocked his eyebrow, if he had one. The pint-sized alien chuckled, testing the side of the bag in his hand with the tip of the hatchet. He gutted the bag, but another bag was in the way. Zim dropped the ax and sliced the bag with his gloved claws. He reached into the bag and pulled out another head.

Zims mouth hung open and his antennas faltered, going limp and down the sides of his head. Impossible, Zim thought. This was… impossible.

"What…" Zim couldn't comprehend it. It couldn't be, but there it was. The scar was there and everything. And the eyes were too perfect, the way they glinted.

Dib open the closet only a few degrees and pressed his eye to the slit. He saw two Zims. One older looking and the one he knew. Both had a terrified look on their face.

Zim gazed a Dib in horror. The alien let the head roll off his hand and thump on the floor next to the ax. He fled to the window, clawing at the wall. He couldn't get out of that madman's house quick enough and Dib had the ax right next to him. Zim didn't even look back, if he did, Dib might rush over and swing the cleaver at his neck to add another head to his collection. He threw himself out the window and onto the lawn.

Dib opened his closet door and stepped over to the skull. Now he was really freaked out. How was he supposed to finish his project with all _this_ going on? He wouldn't, that's how. Not until someone comes and tells him was the heck is going on.

His sister passed by his door, looked in and saw Zims head on the ground. Gaz looked at Dib and said, "Nice," before strolling down the hall.

Dib ran over to the window and peered over the side. Zim was standing on the grass, gasping and stumbling along. The alien saw Dib through wide eyes and bolted away like a frightened deer.

Dib sank down to the floor and put his face in his hands. Why him? He sat there for a long time, clearing his thoughts and trying to conquer the overwhelming feeling of despair. He took in deep breaths and released them slowly.

He felt his mind become a little less foggy. He'd try to forget some of this by working on that project. The human crawled over to his laptop and flipped it open. In the corner was the time. 8:55 PM it stated.

Dib stayed up working on the project until 12:37 AM. He was too tired to think and too lazy to print out the project so he put it on a flash drive. He placed the laptop on the desk and lethargically moved the two heads into the box, unable to think at all. He did notice that Zims head had a gash on the side of his face where a whitish yellow substance oozed out. Some of it got on his hand and he wiped it off on his shirt with disgust.

He crawled into bed, exhausted from all of today's craziness. But not even in his dreams could he escape the madness of the heads.


	4. Time-y Wimey Stuff

Dib woke up the next morning feeling much better, almost forgetting everything that happened yesterday. But then reality slapped him in the face and all of it came rushing back. Dib reached for his glasses and looked over to the floor. It was still there, the box. He looked at the clock.

_9:43 AM_

Now he was late to school. He hopped out of bed and he hadn't changed since the day before but he would just stay in the clothes anyways. He rushed over to the door and cast one last look at the box. Surprisingly, he was already over the thought of having severed heads in his room.

As Dib hurried down the stairs, he thought about what happened yesterday. It wasn't unusual for Zim to try and kill him. No, that happened at least one a month, and he tried to kill Zim too. They were always going over each other's houses after school and beat each other up. That's just the way it goes, always afraid that one of them would pop out and give the other a look at death. But this was different. They never used weapons; it was sort of a silent agreement. Maybe Zim was sick or something, or maybe that thing with the fake reality messes up irkens somehow. He'd ask Parasa. She'd probably complain about how he asks too many questions.

He'd gotten too distracted so he decided to skip breakfast and maybe the teacher would let him get in late. He swung his backpack over his and flew out the door, running back to lock it.

He sprinted all the way to school, which wasn't hard considering he ran every day after or from Zim. He was at the front of the school when he realized something, he forgot the flash drive. His teacher, Mr. Linkman, _never_ takes late work. _Ever_.

Dib groaned. And now to sprint home. Once he got home, he flopped down on the sofa to catch his breath. Something poked him from his pocket. He frowned and reached into his back pocket. It was the flash drive. Dibs eye twitched. Enough was enough; he's going to stay home today.

Dib dragged his backpack up stairs, cursing under his breath the whole time. Finally in his room, he threw his backpack over near his box, collapsed on his bed and instantly fell asleep.

He woke up again to the sound of a ring. Once. Twice. By the third time he was already out of bed and trudging to the stairs. He stumbled down the first half of the stairs, tripped on his trench coat, and fell down the other half.

He recovered by the time the phone rang a fifth time. Dib reached over to the phone and picked it up.

"Hello?" Dib mumbled drowsily.

"Hello, is this the membrane household?" The voice was manly and somehow very familiar.

"Yeah, who is this?"

"Good. Now, have you opened the box? Why am I asking that question? Of course I opened that box!" The person ignored the question and was talking nonsense.

"What?" Dib asked, confused.

"Did you open that box?"

"Yeah…"

"Did you open all the bags yet?"

"Only two…" Dib had no idea why he was telling this stranger all these things but it seemed like the right thing to do. In fact, this guy might have some answers.

"Good then I still have time. If you heard some noise coming from upstairs, don't go up there, you won't find anything. And make a sandwich." The connection cut off.

"Umm… ok?" Dib wondered what was happening and wondered if maybe he was dreaming. Suddenly he felt a raging hunger for a sandwich of jelly and tuna.

He rummaged through the fridge. He found a half-eaten can of tuna and some grape jelly. Mindlessly, he made the sandwich and leaned against the counter, eating the sick, fishy and sweet smelling sandwich.

_Thump. Thump. Ku-ku-kuthump. Thump._

There was a racket going on upstairs. Dib took another bite of the sandwich and stared at the ceiling. What in the world was that?

Suddenly, the ceiling gave way in a cloud of dust and pieces of the ceiling bits. The movement made Dib jump back and nearly choked on his sandwich.

Dib leaned over the pile of debris, slowly chewing on the food. It shifted.

A man's head popped out, pieces of ceiling in his lightning bolt-shaped hair. He stood up and brushed the stuff off his shirt and trench coat. He looked over at Dib and grinned.

"Hey, can I have that sandwich? I'm starved." The man asked.

"Uhh… no." Dib took another bite of the sandwich. He was way too hungry to give up his sandwich.

"But I hated tuna and jelly at that age." The guy complained.

Dib spat out the piece of food in his mouth. He was right, he hates jelly and tuna.

"How did you know that?" Dib asked whipping the spit off his lips and handing the sandwich to the man.

"Because I'm you." The man said, taking in the whole sandwich in two bites.

"Wait… what?"

"Write this down!" The man, who was apparently future Dib, yelped.

"Why!?" Dib barked back, suddenly frightened.

"I need me to, it's important." Future Dib explained, handing present Dib a piece of paper and a black pen.

Dib took the pen and paper. "What do I write down?"

"Every single word I say. Make sure to do it exactly, if you don't, we'll all explode."

"Okokokok." The younger of the two stammered, writing everything he remembered.

"Now I can tell you stuff. Did you write that down?"

"Yes."

Future Dib pulled out a piece of paper and began to read it.

"Well, I'm from the future. It's dark future where the human race is on its last legs. And of course, it was our fault for this happening. What I need to tell you, the most important thing that will change the course of history forever, is that when the highest beings in the universe ask you the ultimate question, say no. That's all you have to do."

"Who are the ultimate beings? And how can I trust you? Maybe you're some robot thing like last time."

"I remember that, and I can't prove it but just trust me, ok?"

"Hmmm… ok, I'll trust you." Dib said warily.

"I cannot tell you who the ultimate beings are."

"Why?"

"Because it doesn't say it on the paper."

"Fine…" Dib just wanted some answers but apparently that wasn't going to happen.

"So as I was saying, say no, ok? And about the whole Zim thing, don't make him angry."

"Is he the hulk now?" Dib snorted.

"Ha ha, very humorous. No, he's… let's say he's broken."

"How? And why did he attack me like that?"

"Man, Parasa was right; I do ask too many questions. And to answer your question, I can't answer your first question. Go ask Parasa."

Dib sighed. He always had to go on a goose chase to find his answers. Soon he'd go up to a teacher, ask a question and they would respond, 'Go ask Parasa'.

"Ok, I guess I'll be off. And I'll just take those heads with me."

"Really?"

"Yup, those are the heads I lost a few days ago when they fell through a rip in space and time. It probably landed here because I wrote the blood on it so it found the nearest thing it could anchor to in a different time and it ended up here."

"Good… wait, why do I have a box of heads in the future?"

"You ended up joining with the mafia and now you a hit man. Funny how things work out. The heads are the way I keep track of who I've killed and who I need to kill next. It puts food on the table, I guess, though hunting's not been going well lately."

Great, Dib went from madman to hit man. "Can you answer my second question?"

"Sure. Zim attacked you and wanted you head for a reason. When I traveled back to his spot, I still haven't worked out all the bugs, so anyone I affect in my past up to this point is affected. It can be sudden cravings, as your thing with the sandwich because I now love tuna and jelly sandwiches since I only get it on good days. Or trying to involuntarily change history so something never happened, which is what happened in Zims case. Zim was a little early though, maybe because the main thing that ties him to my past was already here. That would be his head. Think of it like the Doppler effect."

Dib had to write furiously to keep up with himself. He was happy when that came to an end, though the part of him decapitating his worst enemy troubled him a bit.

"What's the Doppler effect?"

Future Dib sighed, brushing his hand through his hair. "'_Before I talk, I should read a book_.' That's part of a song. Song… Oh! That reminds me."

The older human pulled out another piece of paper and yanked the pen out of the other Dib's hand. He wrote down something and handed the paper and pen back to Dib.

"That's important. Next time you're stuck in a store with a few crazy people and you're about to go crazy yourself, find a radio and put it on this channel at this time."

Dib examined the paper.

**97.3 F.M. 11:13 A.M.**

**M.A.W.**

Was all that was on the paper. What is this M.A.W. thing?

"Ok. I guess I'll go now, time and space is pissed off at me already. This whole wibbly wobbly time-y wimey stuff is just killing me, literally."

Future Dib strolled out of the kitchen and upstairs. Present Dib followed a few minutes later after sticking the papers on the fridge. Once up stairs, he gazed into his room. The box was gone.

Dib could have shouted from joy, if it weren't for the lump in his stomach. The human waited for the feeling to pass. It did, slowly, and when it was gone he thought about his next move. Talk to Parasa perhaps?


	5. The Computer, Parasa

Dib made his was leisurely to his enemy's base. The entire time he was thinking about the questions he would ask so that annoying computer wouldn't go on rambling about nothing. The sky began to cloud over, hanging low and ominously. He picked up his pace and hurried to the strange green house.

Zim had made some changes to the front of the house, and by that he meant Zim had removed some of the creepy animal ornaments he use to have on his lawn, though he decided to keep the gnomes.

Dib let himself in, knowing Zim was probably a school. The inside of the house had the same eeriness and odd layout as it always had. He wandered into the kitchen and into the trashcan, preferring it over the toilet. The elevator led down into the belly of the lair. Dib gazed around all the complex machinery as his eyes adjusted to the almost complete lack of light.

He meandered about till he tripped over a thick black cord. The sound was incredibly loud compared to the silence in the room.

"To the creed of Spode, what the heck was that!?" Came a feminine voice from down the hall.

The black cord reared up and rattled its bare copper wires at Dib.

"Intruder! State your business!" She snarled.

"I have a question." Dib said evenly, avoiding the cable as it whipped around to hit him in the chest.

"Oh, it's you." Parasa said crossly but failed to hide the delight in her voice at having company.

"Ok, let me ask you something, why is Zim broken?" Dib questioned, hoping for an answer.

"Why do you ask?" Parasa retorted.

"I told myself to as you why."

"And how is that?"

"I meet my future self."

"That was you? My alarms have been going off all day thanks to you. I spent the little time I had trying to find what it was setting it off. Apparently it comes on when someone starts to mess with the wibbly-wobbliness of time and space." The computer went on to rant about her security systems, what happens when you play with the seriousness of time and space and the song that's remained stuck in her head for the past few hours. The song had something to do about Mesopotamia and reading books.

"Can you answer my question please?" The human broke in just as Parasa was getting into chattering on about how she's been having setbacks all day.

"Fine. Well… It's kind of, sort of… my fault." Parasa said slowly, trying to gauge Dib reaction.

"How?"

"I sort of went through his mind to learn a bit about humans from experience. And the only way to do that was to shut off his emotions to get information that wasn't contaminated by his personal views. When I was done I forgot to turn on his emotion filter, so now he is really sensitive to every little thing because his emotions are now amplified about a thousand times that of normal by his PAK. Curiosity crashed the draken, as they say. Though it should be, 'those who question a draken always end up blown to smithereens.' You know, because drakens like exterminating thing…? Wait, you're not Mittens…Oh Mittens…"

"Can we fix it?" The human asked, not bothering to ask what a '_draken_' was or who Mittens is.

"Yes we can!" Parasa chanted. Somehow that was familiar to something from Dibs childhood…

Parasa cleared her throat, though she didn't have one. "Yeah, I can fix. I first have to finish my project, another reality! I'll probably finish… in two hours."

"Seriously?"

"Questions, questions, questions, you're always with the questions. I would finish in two hours if it weren't for my setbacks that I would have mentioned earlier, hadn't you interrupted me. So as I was saying, one problem is Zim. I didn't send his to school because of his disorder and I've been trying to keep him quiet. The other problem is one that's a tiny bit more complicated. I seem to have unknowingly contracted a virus while doing research on hominids. It's causing havoc all over, deleting files, making new ones, moving older files to new locations. That's almost certainly why you got into the house without me noticing you."

"Ok, great. Then when will you finish your project?"

"By tomorrow afternoon, give or take an hour or two."

"What's your project like?"

"You'll find out."

Dib sighed. Last time he was killed by some raptor thing, what would happen this time?

"Why do you make that noise? Do you not like my realities? This one will be fun, just don't open the doors or do anything stupid."

"I'll just leave now…" Dib said before turning around and heading towards the elevator, wherever it was.

"Wait! Umm… what do you find scarier, a whale face-hugger hybrid or a floating bionic zebra head?" Parasa chatted, trying to think of something to keep the conversation going.

"What? What's a face-hugger?"

"Have you never seen _Alien_ before? A face-hugger is kind of like a fleshy sting ray thing that hugs your face and lays eggs in your throat."

"Well_ that_ sounds pleasant." Dib said sarcastically.

"How is that pleasant to anyone?" The computer asked, not understanding what sarcasm is.

The human gripped the bridge of his nose and sighed, irritated by the computers lack of understanding. "Just forget what I said, ok?"

"Humans…" Parasa mumbled.

Dib continued to walk down the halls, looking for some sort of exit. "Where's Zim?" He asked, starting to feel unnerved by the unbroken silence.

"Huh? Oh, he's was sleeping around here somewhere, don't know where he is now."

Dib finally found the elevator, small rust spots littered around the edges of the door. He stepped inside and was greeted by the sound of mind-numbing elevator music that hadn't been there before. He leaned against the wall, weary from his conversation with the computer. Dib was nearly lulled to sleep by the music.

The elevator reached the top of the trashcan. Dib fell backwards when the wall suddenly disappeared. He stood up and strolled over to the door, reaching for the doorknob when he realized someone else was in the room.

Zim and his idiotic robot were sitting of the couch watching TV. They both seemed completely oblivious to Dib existence, too distracted by the television. The alien broke his concentration to look a Dib for a moment. He smiled and waved at the human, apparently unaware that they were worst enemies.

Dib waved back awkwardly with a strange, crooked grin. He turned the knob and stepped outside, expecting to be blinded by the light but the dark clouds overhead made everything seem dull and drab. He wandered back home with his hands in his pockets while he thought about whatever came to his mind. He thought back to what Parasa said, someone named Mittens. And something else, dragons maybe, but not exactly.

He reached his home. Maybe tomorrow would be a bit more normal, though he doubted it.

The highest beings in the universe, Dib thought when he saw the note with the radio station on it that he had left on the fridge. He had a hunch that that note was going to be useful very soon.

For once, he was right.

* * *

**Done with my second story! I hope I can start my next one soon with Parasa and possibly some of her friends...**

**Thanks to everyone for reviewing, makes me happy to see people like my stories.**


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